It was the first time duckpins were automatically set in a bowling alley. Inventor Kenneth Sherman said his robot pin boy was more accurate, faster and easier on the pins than a human.

KESLING: Well, everybody knows what the traditional bowling pin setter is, right? Like, the pins there stand on their own. You knock them down. The big arm sweeps them. They set them down.

For London, 60, it all started as a 3-year-old in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when his parents Paul and Virginia got him a plastic bowling pin set. The family had a fireplace that became his bowling ...